I have always disliked wind. No. That is not strong enough. I hate wind. I am sure this is quite irrational. Wind exists. It is a part of the reality of nature, where it has its purposes, including pollination and driving wind farms. Many are annoyed by it and some are considerably annoyed. Some people actually like wind, especially sailors. Most tolerate wind or rarely give it a thought unless it is quite severe. A mild breeze is a pleasant thing. Increasingly strong winds become increasingly annoying.
I often imagine that the day of my memorial service will be quite windy. As family and friends gather at the church, most appropriately dressed, I will watch (I plan to) as their jackets, shirts, ties, skirts and priestly vestments flail about much like an unattended jib of a sailboat. I won't mind. I probably will chuckle, knowing that it was rather silly of me to have wasted so much emotional energy over wind.
It won't matter anymore. No more than the makes of the cars I have owned, or the houses I have lived in, or the unpleasantness of encounters with boorish, mean or insensitive people will matter. Nor will it make any difference that I, like everyone else who ever lived, had felt hurt, sad, trapped, afraid, ill or desperate at times. I also will have had many enduring moments of joy and fulfillment during my life on earth.
No doubt most people have negative feelings about something. A person is a composite of emotions, both negative and positive. The stronger our emotions, the richer our lives are. I find that those who do not have strong feelings about much of anything are not very interesting. They seem to lack the ability to rejoice in the positive ones.
I have wept in utter desperation over grievous wounds and I have shouted and cried with joy in moments of ecstasy. I have loved and I have been loved. I have shared much with others. I have succeeded in some things and have been a dismal failure in others. I have always moved on, because it seems simply that this is what one does. Each ending should be followed by a new beginning. If a road ends, there should be a junction with a new road to follow.
I came to the end of a road when my first wife died. The choice seemed quite obvious. There was a junction ahead with a new road to follow, and I took it.
It has been my blessing to have known people who have come to the end of a road and set forth on a new one. I think of friends who have lost children. How could anything be more devastating? Yet, they moved on to face the future and look for the good they could find.
The one thing I will not allow wind to do is to take me some place I do not want to go. It tries hard to do that sometimes. There have been times when driving a car that I have had to fight the wind to maintain a steady path. I have experienced disorientation caused by wind-driven whiteout conditions while skiing. Strong winds have driven me to distraction on numerous fishing trips whether I was in a boat or fishing from a bank. Snarled lines or the thrashing of my boat against a dock during launch and retrieval have prompted language unfit for polite company.
I think that wind must be a symbol of the common thread of struggle in life. As struggle and suffering are inevitable life experiences, so wind is a fact of life. Perhaps I should stop wasting so much emotional energy hating it. After all, I won't mind it on the day of my memorial service.
We are told that someday there will be a place where there is no more pain, no more suffering and no more grief. I can't help but wonder if there will be any wind there. If there is, I think I probably won't mind it.
Thomas Ramsey is a Northsider.
